Daily Search Forum Recap: October 4, 2010

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

October 2010 Google Webmaster Report
It is that time of the month again, the time we summarize what webmasters are talking about when it comes to Google SEO topics. For last month's report see the September 2010 Google webmaster report. This month, the WebmasterWorld thread is feeling something big is coming. Tedster, WebmasterWorld's administrator said: There are many different kinds of ranking disruptions being reported right now - dropped domain roots, unexplainable traffic spikes and dips. These things often come

Duplicate Alternative Text For Same Image Considered Spam?
Some people are really really scared of doing something on their web site that would be considered search spam. So those people ask some interesting questions. I personally found this question pretty interesting, especially since a Googler responded to it. A person asked in the Google Webmaster Help forums if he can use the same alt (alternative) text tags to describe the same image but multiple size options. He asked: I am in the process

When Will Google Remove Content & Search Results?
As many of you know, Google is very unlikely to remove results from the search results. Time after time, Google has gone to lengths to explain why they do not like to remove search results. That being said, there are times Google will remove search results. As Daniel Roofer from the UK wrote very well in the Google Web Search Help forums, Google will remove content under the following circumstances. 1) Child Porn - click

Google Blue Triangle Arrow - An Instant Feature
Starting late last week, searchers on Google finally started seeing blue arrows on Google, indicating the search results you are looking at. When the blue arrow is pointing at a search result or ad or listing, hitting enter will automatically take you to that search result's landing page. As you can see above, the arrow is on the first listing. When I hit enter on the keyboard, I will be taken to that web site.

Google's Add / Submit URL Form Goes Offline
Over the weekend, the famous add URL to Google form was offline. Google posted a known issue about this saying: The form to submit URLs to add to our index at http://www.google.com/addurl is currently not available. Our engineers are aware of this issue and working to resolve it. Keep in mind that Google generally discovers new URLs on its own. Also keep in mind that the use of this form does not affect crawling, indexing,